


Even in the Dark (I'll still believe)

by IMaketheMonsters



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, I swear a lot so they do too, Pitch Perfect AU, battle of the bands au, no beta we die like men, yes I'm starting another one though the rest are unfinished- fight me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29773704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IMaketheMonsters/pseuds/IMaketheMonsters
Summary: Buckle up, pitches, it's gonna be one hell of a ride.OR: The Pitch Perfect!AU but it's Battle of the Bands
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 49





	Even in the Dark (I'll still believe)

**Author's Note:**

> So this has actually been a secret project of mine for a month or so that I literally didn't tell anyone about until like two days ago because I so desperately wanted to be the first one to put one of these out. Pitch Perfect is one of my favourite movies of all time, and it was actually the first AU I ever thought of when I first watched the show. It took me a long time to storyboard it and get all the character motivations right.
> 
> HowEVER, it seems like some other brilliant people on tumblr have caught wind of this idea (because who wouldn't, tbh, it's perfect) so y'all have forced my hand lmao. Don't get mad at me for starting yet another multi-chap fic pls I promise I will finish all of them in due time.
> 
> Special thanks to @bluefirewrites for the encouragement and @gillespie-s on tumblr, who has listened to me scream and rant about my fics endlessly. Thanks for being the Luke to my Reggie lol.
> 
> The song mentioned in this fic is Tori Kelly's City Dove. Yes, I am one of those people that takes pre-existing songs and pretends my characters wrote them.

Luke hates Tuesdays. Not only does he routinely stumble out of his dorm on less than six hours of sleep (he still doesn’t understand why the only Chemistry 400 class this semester that will fill his credit requirement has to be at _eight thirty in the goddamn morning_ ), but it’s also the one day a week that the Louth University Band Association has enough spare time to come sniffing about his business.

“Luke!” a voice calls, the sound of sneakers slapping against the pavement approaching from somewhere on his right. He grits his teeth and veers off the path, weaving in and out of the clusters of people scattered around the quad at the front of the main campus. It’s a brisk September afternoon, the grass cluttered with dry moss and checkered picnic blankets, but Luke relishes in the crisp bite of the breeze that curls under the collar of his heavy denim jacket.

Unfortunately for him, the crunch of rust leaves under his feet— however peaceful— are nowhere near loud enough to mask the repetitive shouting of his name that trails behind him. “Luke! Luke Patterson!”

He pulls up short, spinning round to face the unrelenting assailant with a lumbering sigh. “What do you want, Alessia?”

The girl in question, a petite junior in a powder-blue parka and dark track pants comes to a full stop in front of him, both hands braced against her knees while she struggles to catch her breath. Her blonde hair spills wildly over her shoulders as she straightens. “I came to talk to you about the legacy thing.”

“Not interested.”

“You _say_ that, but you haven’t even heard me out yet!”

He crosses his arms. “I heard you out last week, and the week before, and last year when you were just an underling and had to follow Xavier’s needy ass everywhere. I’m not doing it.”

“Luke, Sunset Curve is the only group on campus that’s ready to compete at a collegiate level and hasn’t taken in a single recruit in the last three years.”

“That’s because we’re not _recruiting._ We’re a band. We only joined the Association so we could have the licensing to compete in Rising Star. You know that.”

“I do,” she nods, “But as a representative for the Association you have to understand where I’m coming from. You guys are graduating this year, and if you don’t leave anything behind we’re going to be down a team for the Battle next season. Not winning means less funding, remember?”

His brow furrows. “If you want legacies, why don’t you just talk to Carrie? She’s been grooming her team since she got her claws on the crown last year—that thing is basically a cult.”

Alessia shakes her head, adjusting the strap of her backpack over her shoulder. “Dirty Candy is a force to be reckoned with, I’ll give you that. They’ll have a strong chance at winning, even after she graduates this year. But between the two of you, the Association has had a _guarantee_ that our school will place in the top three at Rising Star, which is why I _need_ you to agree to train some newbies before you go.”

He opens his mouth to protest, but she jumps in before he can get a word out—“I don’t care if you actually let them into the band. I don’t care if we never see you guys on the same stage. Pick some freshmen and teach them the ‘Ways of the Curve,’ or whatever the hell you guys call it, and set them up to start their own band next year. Just don’t leave me with nothing.”

He closes his mouth, narrowing his eyes at the way she clasps her hands in front of her, her lips pressed together in an effort to hold back the stream of what is sure to be another exhausting barrage of explanations and pleading.

He heaves out a long exhale, wearily running a hand through his hair. “I’ll go to auditions, but no promises.”

Her entire face lights up. “Really?” she gasps eagerly, bouncing from side to side in her excitement.

He shrugs, “Might as well see what the grubs have to offer, right?”

That’s how he ends up sandwiched between Reggie and Alex later that evening, bundled in the sweltering dark of the Music Department auditorium as hopeful after hopeful climbs the stage to offer themselves to the Louth Rock Gods— or at least, that’s what it feels like. Luke would know, he auditioned (and was subsequently rejected) as a generic sacrifice his freshman year, back when he had no idea what kind of music he wanted to specialize in and no idea the dedication and kiss-assery required to make it into one of those Louth Cults.

That was before he met Alex and Reggie (and Bobby, he tacks on belatedly) in their second year, before they found their sound, jamming in an emergency staircase in the Hudson library one drunken midnight. That Luke, insecure and without direction, died the day Sunset Curve was created, reborn as the first and only band in Rising Star’s decades-long history to take the entire competition in the year of their conception—no upperclassmen, no sponsorships, no outside help. Just him and the boys—just the way they like it.

Reggie shifts uncomfortably to his left, his red converse propped up over the back of the seat in front of him, his leather jacket draped over his lap. Alex, as per usual, is twirling his drumsticks between his fingers, drumming out a silent beat in the air that has the whole row trembling beneath them. Luke can feel the heat prickling against his skin, beads of sweat forming under his hair to slide slowly down the nape of his neck and soak into the cotton of his sleeveless shirt.

He’d walk out right now if Alessia wasn’t sitting down near the front, twisting her neck after every performance to glare threateningly in their direction.

He groans quietly, pushing his bangs back from his forehead, the flutter of air a momentary release from the relentless heat of the stage lights that illuminate the raised platform.

You’d think for all the competitions they’d collectively won over the years the school could afford to invest in lighting that wasn’t made and installed in the early ‘90s.

Then again, Drama Nerds are a beast of a whole different kind and Luke isn’t nearly invested enough to go poking that bear.

The performer on stage, a lanky guy with dark hair and chunky glasses finally finishes his clumsy attempt at a Stairway to Heaven solo, the electric guitar trembling in his hands as he fumbles the last note. The kid’s got an earnest face, though, so Luke makes sure to clap extra hard, even throwing in a whoop or two as the guy clambers awkwardly down the steps into the audience.

A blond head to the left of the stage beckons the guy over, patting him on the back enthusiastically. Luke recognizes Nick Danforth-Evans, the senior president of the rec team, sitting in the front row with his signature sunny smile. He’s a nice guy; polite and hardworking, but too soft to make it in the competitive world, so he takes in all the stray musicians that fall below the Cult Cut-off and gives them a home to casually jam out in.

Apparently, he used to date Carrie Wilson back in the day, although Luke has no idea how that could’ve possibly worked out. His gaze switches the right corner of the auditorium seats, where the Cult Queen herself is perched haughtily with her pod of sparkly worker bees fanned out in a circle around her, flipping her long brown ringlets over her shoulder and whispering something into the ear on her right.

“What do you think she’s saying?” Reggie breathes dreamily, leaning forward over his outstretched legs (Luke’s always found it wildly unfair how flexible he is—it’s not like Reggie’s the type to drop into the splits during a guitar solo, but Luke might, if he could) to get a better look at her porcelain face.

“Who cares, Reg,” Alex groans from his other side, his head flopping limply over the backrest of his seat. “It’s probably snarky and unnecessary, just like everything else that comes out of her stupid mouth.”

Luke has to agree with him there. Stuck up legacy bitches are a staple of collegiate history—there’s at least one in every performing arts department in every school across the globe—but as beautiful as they are, he’s gotten real tired of stale clichés.

“Every one of these grubs are the same,” he mutters lowly, the frustration coiled in his chest doing nothing to numb the weight of the heat that’s begun seeping its way under his skin. “They’re either rec musicians— which is fine; if that’s what they want— or they’re only doing this because they want to be ‘rich and famous’. None of them have that _drive_ , y’know? That _need_ to play, to touch people with their music. Fuck, even _Carrie_ has that and I don’t even think she has a soul.”

“I mean, we’ve seen some decent guitar players,” Reggie muses.

“That drummer wasn’t half bad,” Alex adds optimistically. “If we have to, we can poach some of them from the rec team and drop some ‘Curve knowledge on them.”

“Don’t you mean, ‘Curve-Balls’?” Reggie asks slyly. Luke just stares at him.

Alex drops his face into his hands. “No. No, I don’t.”

“Look,” Luke directs his attention back to the issue at hand, “I told the Association that we’d come to auditions and think about it. And we did. We tried. But I’m not passing our name down—our _legacy_ —to a group of half-assed fuckers who don’t care enough to even _attempt_ to claw their way to the top like we did.”

Alex leans back into his seat, nodding reluctantly, but Reggie purses his lips, his brow furrowing as he looks down the rows of chairs from their perch at the top of the incline. “I just feel bad for Alessia. With how hard they’ve been riding us about this for the last couple years, I’m sure they’ve put even more pressure on their student reps.”

Luke’s getting really tired of the nagging voice in the back of his head. His life would be so much easier if he didn’t have to deal with a conscience.

“There’s still a couple people left,” Alex reasons, patting him on the shoulder before he can give himself an aneurysm before the age of twenty-five. “Let’s just see if anyone stands out before we make any drastic decisions.”

They turn their attention back to the stage, where, during the brief interlude, the amps and drumkit have been pushed towards the back in order to clear an area big enough to resemble a dance floor.

A tiny girl in a vibrant orange crop top and sparkly bike shorts bounds energetically onto the stage, her long braids pulled back into two bunches and a blinding smile stretching ear to ear across her face. “Hi! I’m Flynn!” she announces cheerfully, her high, clear voice projecting confidently to the back of the auditorium.

“She looks like a cheerleader,” Reggie mutters.

“I was in competitive cheerleading until I was sixteen”—Luke and Alex chuckle under their breaths—“But I dropped out to focus on getting into college, so here I am!” she beams.

Luke wonders if she bleaches her smile, or if her dental hygiene is just that good.

“I taught myself the steps to Dirty Candy’s Finals routine at Rising Star last year”—Alex groans quietly. Luke is having trouble stifling his laughter—“So I hope you like it!”

The tell-tale beat of Dirty Candy’s “All Eyes On Me” filters through the stereo on the side of the stage, and Luke’s laughter is stunned into silence when this girl opens her mouth and _sings_ the opening line in perfect imitation of Carrie Wilson’s signature inflection. Her dance style is clearly not as ingrained in hop hop—her footwork isn’t as heavy and her turns are a little more fluid—but there’s a snappy precision to her arms and hips that show just how comfortable competitive cheerleading must make you in your own body.

“Dude,” Reggie breathes, “This girl is fucking _awesome.”_

Luke can’t help but agree. She’s refreshing, to say the least. She’s definitely more of a dancer than a singer, but there’s _life_ in the way she moves, filling the stale air of the auditorium with a relentless energy that matches the shine of her outfit on stage (Luke wonders if it’s because she’s a freshman, and she hasn’t yet had all the life sucked out of her by the merciless leech that is collegiate academia, but then he catches himself wandering and turns his attention back to the performance).

Flynn strikes the final pose, the last notes of the backing track giving way to a wave of applause from the audience. She’s not even panting, he notes, the subtle sheen of sweat on her dark skin the only indication that she has just executed any form of physical exertion. She taps her heels together in some sort of finishing move Luke recognizes from watching Olympic gymnastics and bows, laughing at the several whoops and whistles tossed her way by the rec team. Luke catches a tremor, then, a single twitch of nerves in the corner of her wide smile as she directs her attention to Stage Left.

Carrie Wilson, in her wool miniskirt and sleeveless blouse, crosses her long legs, reclining back into her seat with casual indifference. Her hands lay perfectly still on the armrests, the companions bookending her seat forced to keep their arms tucked into their sides to avoid jostling her. Even from up here, Luke can see that her face is a stone mask, the minute narrowing of her eyes the only indication that she’s even acknowledged the younger girl’s existence.

“Dude, if Carrie doesn’t take her, I will,” Alex hisses. “I bet that girl would shred on the drums.”

“Forget it,” Reggie waves his hand half-heartedly. “She sang a Dirty Candy song, man. She’s not looking to get in anywhere else.”

“He’s right,” Luke cuts in before Alex can go off on some convoluted scheme to steal her away, “Carrie’s just letting her sweat it out. It’s a power grab, at most. She’ll get in.”

Sure enough, Carrie waits exactly three beats longer before she inclines her head, the picture of graceful regency, and allows a small smile to cross her pink lips. “You’ll do,” she says, and this time the grins that splits Flynn’s face is blinding and genuine, because even Luke—who’s been at odds with Carrie Wilson since their own auditions freshman year—has never once heard her express stronger approval for a new grub.

The newest would-be worker bee bounces excitedly off the stage, nearly careening into one of the volunteer stagehands, who is moving to set up a keyboard and stool on stage for the next performer, a girl probably about Flynn’s age with a swoop of dark curls that fall loosely down her back and a sweet face framed by a pair of wide doe eyes.

Her on-stage presence is startlingly still in contrast to Flynn’s bubbling energy, but there’s an undercurrent of ease in the way she takes her place behind the keyboard without so much as a nervous glance at the waiting audience.

“Hi, my name is Julie,” she says (and Luke thinks it’s fitting, that’s she’s got such a sweet voice for a sweet face), “This is a song I wrote last summer. I hope y’all like it.”

The intro she plays is brief, simple, and not nearly long enough to give Luke enough time to prepare for what comes next.

_I don’t know what it’s all about_

_But every time I look around_

_All I see is how I’m holding on_

_Don’t ask me what’s wrong or right, I don’t even know the time_

_All I know is I’m holding on_

Reggie’s jaw drops. Alex’s fingers catch, his drumsticks held frozen in the air mid-spin. Luke can only hold his breath, clutching at the plastic edge of his seat as if turning into a statue will somehow afford him the superhuman ability to enhance his hearing. They don’t even need to tear their eyes from the stage to know they’re all thinking the same thing: _this one. This girl. This is what they’ve been waiting for._

_I haven’t figured anything out_

_I haven’t figured anything, anything, anything out_

The anticipation hangs over their heads like the looming crest of a waterfall, the stale air of the auditorium seemingly shocked alive. _Come on,_ his mind whispers, and he thinks this is maybe the first time he’s been so utterly _thrilled_ with a performance in a long, long time. He hasn’t felt this shimmer in the air since Finals at Rising Star (the first one, the year that started it all), hasn’t soaked in this haze of wonder at the realization that _this one moment_ could change his life. _Come on, Julie. Show me what you got._

_City dove, fly between the buildings and fences_

_Soft inside but rough on the edges_

_Waiting here for something to come, just holding on, oh_

The resonance of her voice hits him like a freight train, humming its steady way through the front of his face and sliding, syrupy and thick (somewhere in the back of his mind he makes a note for a new lyric; keywords: _honey_ and _nectar_ and _dripping_ and _sin_ ) down the passage of his throat.

_City dove, fly between the stars and the headlights_

_Passing by the clouds and the street signs_

_Knowing that there’s something to come, just holding on, oh_

And then it’s over, and Luke is left with a gaping wound in his left side, a hole in his chest torn open by the sheer force of this otherworldly being (and it has to be _being_ , because there is nothing about that voice that can be described by mundane words like _girl_ and _student_ and _human_ ), and he knows beyond a shred of a doubt that he will never complain for another moment about training an army of grubs so long as he gets to hear that voice for the rest of his life.

And then Carrie Wilson’s icy voice is slicing through the roar of applause, predictably composed and commanding before anyone else in the audience has even caught their breath. “You.” She points at Julie with her index finger, her right hand raised (someone on the rec team gasps. Carrie has never so much as lifted an eyebrow toward an auditionee) and then at the only open spot in her inner circle; the single unoccupied chair directly in front of her. “Here.”

Flynn, who clearly knows Julie, judging by the way she’s squirming in her seat on the outer edges of the swarm, beckons wildly to her friend, and then Julie is scampering off the stage in her purple sneakers and into the Cult Queen’s evil clutches before Luke has even managed to find his voice.

“The Sea Witch strikes again,” Alex moans softly into his hands.

Reggie’s face is turning various shades of purple, spluttering something about, “She can’t always just do that, there’s supposed to be a vote if we both want her, she can’t—"

And Luke… yeah. Luke really fucking hates Tuesdays.

**Author's Note:**

> What did you think? This fic is my baby so please be kind! 
> 
> This fic is going to be a blend of my personal favourite headcanons, some childhood memories (yes I ripped the name of the competition from Lemonade Mouth because it's perfect, and yes I am imagining the Barden U campus in my head when I think of Louth), and some fun new dynamics!
> 
> Make sure you stay tuned! Thanks for reading :)


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